10 Essential Tips for Working With Styles in InDesign

Styles are an essential tool for formatting text efficiently and consistently. Here are 10 important tips for getting the most out of text styles in InDesign.

1. Pay Attention to Based On Styles. Every style you create in InDesign is based on another style. So when you change an attribute in a style, that change can be reflected in all the text formatted with styles based on it.

2. Be cautious about editing the definition of the [Basic Paragraph] style. If you make changes to [Basic Paragraph] and then copy and paste text into a document where the defintion of [Basic Paragraph] is different, the formatting of the text may change.

3. Use Next Style options. When creating a paragraph style, use the Next Style setting to specify which style is applied after the current style when you press Enter or Return.

4. Don’t double-click on styles. You can double-click on styles in the Paragraph or Character Styles panels to edit them, but it’s not a good idea since you might accidentally apply a style to text you have selected. Instead, right-click on a style and choose Edit Style from the contextual menu.

5. Apply a style while you create it. If you want a new style to be applied to selected text, select Apply Style To Selection.

Mike is the Editor in Chief of InDesignSecrets.com, InDesign Magazine, and CreativePro.com. He is also the author of several lynda.com video training series, including Font Management Essential Training, InDesign FX, and InDesign CC: Interactive Document Fundamentals.